Lubing duration

[slk]

How long will lubed bullets last after you size them and lube them without making up the round? Will they loose their effectiveness after a while? I just did not want to size and lube hundreds of cast bullets, and have to re do them if I am not ready to use them. Thing is you heat the sizer/luber and wait a 1/2 hour for it to get up to temp you want to make the most use of your time. So if ya made up a bunch how long would they stay good ?

Steve

[Ozark mike]

Depends on the loob most will last almost forever on the other hand crisco will only last a couple months add a little bw to it and it will last quite a while.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

What amount of time are you concerned with?
Months?
years?
Decades?

There are two things to consider.

First one, if you are using a Alloy with a High Antimony content (like 92-6-2), is that Boolits will grow (in diameter) with age. You can see as much as .0005 in 6 months, and maybe another .001 in a couple years. There probably will not be much more growth after 2 years.

Second is Lube dryout. I've seen cheap mass-marketed Commercial cast bullets with cheap hard Commercial lube that are about a decade old, and the lube is cracked and falling out of the grooves, that may happen sooner than a decade? ...there is probably no beeswax in most Commercial Lubes. While I don't have any home cast boolits with a good beeswax based lube, that are a decade old to prove my thoughts, I do know Beeswax holds oils better and longer then paraffin waxes. I have some Lube Sticks that are beeswax based that are about 40 years old, and they have not shown any sign of drying out. I believe a sized and lubed bullet (with a beeswax based lube) will still be "loadable" and shootable five decades later.

[slk]

Well like a few years. That is all. I was using that Orange Magic stuff from Lyman. I just switched to the Carnauba Red. Although it has not worked it's way through the luber/sizer yet. I tried to get as much of the old stuff out so there could not be too much Lyman stuff left in the bottom.

Steve

[mdi]

I haven't researched the metallurgy and aspects of time vs size in quite a while, but I have cast, then waited, one month, one week up to 2 years before sizing and lubing. And I have some bullets I cast and lubed in 2012 (I put them in small boxes, stacked and not loose). Early on in my casting I considered (worried) about time of casting before sizing, and what I found for my use, no added difficulty in processing or poor performance was found if my cast bullets were 4 hours old or 4 months old before processing. I'm sure there are those that take all this into consideration, and that's great. I have gotten a bit less anal about such things and my cast bullet handloads work just as well as they did when I first got clean shooting cast handloads, a few thousand casts ago.. :wink:.

[Bazoo]

Years would be fine. Decades maybe if not stored in adverse conditions with lube exposed to open air. I lube and store mine 2 ways, first if they are tumble lubed or lubed with something like BAC or carnauba red, loose in a small Tupperware. If they are lubed with something messy like 50/50, I generally store them individually in the insert that comes in a cartridge box.

I'm probably going to take to drilling wooden blocks to make some to fit 30 caliber rifle bullets as I don't have any inserts to fit this acceptably.

[farmbif]

ive got bullets cast of wheel weights and a bit of tin lube sized with carnauba red that have been in old Speer plastic bullet boxes for almost a decade and when I want to load some they are every bit as good as the day they were lube sized. in fact I just loaded some of these last week and they all shot perfect

[murf205]

Another good case for powder coating.

[Green Frog]

I bought some cast 32-40 rifle bullets at a gun show once. They were in an old flat tobacco tin and lubed with what I assume was the old black Ideal lube, probably at least 30-40 years previously (somebody’s grandfather) but worked perfectly well in my 32-40 high wall. I’d guess today’s high carnauba content lubes would be good for 30 years or more. Formulae containing beef tallow, Crisco, peanut oil, etc... not so long.

Froggie

[Patrick L]

I generally keep them for YEARS. I tend to do things in batches/stages, so I always have ready supplies. I cast boolits that sit in coffee cans for years before I lubesize them. When they do get lubesized, they get packed in boxes where they often sit for years before they're loaded into cartridges. Never had a problem.

[Patrick L]

I actually just finished shooting up about 600 .45 ACP LSWCs that a friend gave me out of his moms estate. They were cast and lubesized by his late stepfather back in the 60s or 70s. Loaded and shot fine